SOLDIER ‘COOKS’ TEACHER
…He pushed a pan with hot cooking oil at him causing serious burns on his body
By Mast Reporter
IN A drunken display of military bravado on a civilian, a Zambia Army soldier based in Eastern Province last week viciously attacked a teacher whom he splashed with hot cooking oil leaving him with serious injuries.
The traumatised teacher is nursing serious burns on his arms and neck.
According to eyewitness accounts, on Wednesday evening around 19:00 hours the teacher, John Nyirenda, and his friend only identified as Soko were peacefully waiting to buy some chips at a popular spot around Culu Ca Bowa.
As they were waiting for their order, a soldier arrived in the company of a girl only identified as Vasty and asked for the price of the chips using obscene language.
When the teacher and his friend advised the soldier not to use such language, the latter became violent.
A Mast reporter found medical personnel cleaning the burnt skin on Nyirenda’s arm and neck at Nyanje Mission Hospital after the attack.
Nyirenda, who was in pain but agreed to be interviewed, gave the reporter an account of his ordeal.
“We were just seated waiting for chips when this officer came with that girl, Vasty. Then he asked in vulgar language that ‘imwe baf***la, how much are the chips?’ Then we told him ‘it’s K20’. But we also told him that the language he had used was not good,” he narrated.
“Then he poured beer on me and I grabbed the bottle and poured on him, too. Then he said, ‘it’s like you don’t know me’. He left and few minutes later, he came back and threw the bottle at me. I jumped aside making the bottle hit the wall. Upon seeing that he hadn’t hit me, he pushed a pan of chips on me and then the hot cooking oil on the pan fell on my arm and neck. I was fortunate I had a windbreaker on, otherwise it would have been something else. Or if I had not jumped aside, he would have hit me in the head with the bottle.”
The person who was selling the chips, who only identified himself as Nathan, gave the same account as Nyirenda’s.
He said he was shocked at the soldier’s unprovoked violence.
“What I saw was that Nyirenda was seated with his friend Soko waiting for the chips since they are our usual customers, and this soldier came with a girl and asked the price of the chips and we responded to him that it’s K20. But then I don’t know what happened. I just saw the officer pouring beer on Nyirenda and he [Nyirenda] grabbed the bottle from him and poured on him [soldier], too. Later, we just saw him coming back and he threw the bottle, which narrowly missed Nyirenda and hit the window. Then he pushed the pan on Nyirenda and said ‘I will kill you. You don’t know that I am a soldier’?” Nathan said.
Yesterday, Nyirenda said he had not reported the assault to the police because the soldier’s superiors had told him that they were handling the matter administratively.
And Chieftainess Nyanje of the Nsenga people has described as barbaric the soldier’s unprovoked attack on the teacher.
She said it was sad that the military officers who had been deployed in the area to protect the people could behave in such an uncivilised manner.
“We didn’t tell them to beat people. We want peace in our chiefdom and not what they are doing, to harass the people. I don’t want violence in my chiefdom. We are happy that government sent them here so that we can be protected, but not for them to be evil to us. No. That is not good and I don’t want that,” Chieftainess Nyanje said.
She appealed to the soldiers operating in her chiefdom to provide security and not to be the ones endangering the lives of civilians.
By press time, The Mast was still making efforts to get a comment from the Zambia Army public relations unit.
